Deadline Day

So today is the transfer deadline day: words that elicit a whole range of emotions from football fans and mass hysteria in the upper offices of football clubs. Anyone sensible would think that deadline day is a terrible time to get your transfer business done, considering that teams have had all summer to get the job done, the season actually started three weeks ago and deadline day usually ends with failed negotiations and panic buys. In some cases it makes sense for a transfer to only go through on the lat day. Long and arduous negotiations finally come to a head and life is beathed into moves that were long tought to be dead. In most cases, it seem like teams take a scatter-gun approach to the business and try to get just about anyone through the door. It makes for tedious, but often addictive television as rumour and counter-rumour follow each other on the yellow ticker and it seems that this season will be far more interesting than the past few, even if deals don't get done in the end.

What is the point of having a deadline on transfers anyway? I don't think I really know the answer to that. I vaguely remember there being some talk about it protecting smaller teams from having their players poached during the season, but it just leaves them having their players poached at a moment when they have no chance to replace them. If one of the super-rich teams comes in for a smaller team's best player and lets the whole world know about it through a convenient leak to the press, the smaller team has a hell of a hard time keeping the player who suddenly remembers that he always wanted to play for the bigger team because of ambition, or trophies or respect for the coach or whatever excuse they use to cover their greed for the bigger contract on offer. I suppose that's not entirely fair as there are some players who move for other reasons, but I think it covers most transfers and I haven't even mentioned the agents yet.

All in all, I think that the transfer window experiment has had its time and has just become a horrible, twisted parody of itself (like politics and blockbuster movies). I suppose it's a reflection of the vaccous and money obessed society we have become in 2017. The world is going to hell in a handbasket. Things were better in my day. Everyone has nodded towards the grumpy old man who said those words to them whilst ignoring them and wondering when the next instagram snap of that celebrity's beach holiday will be posted. I think the transfer deadline day is a sign that the grumpy old men were right (that and the instagram obsession). I don't really know what my point is here, but maybe it's that there's no getting off this ride to nowhere.